Labour’s ‘conference arrangements committee’ (CAC) has barred a motion put forward by members to cancel US spy firm Palantir’s £330m contract to process NHS patients’ data.

Palantir motion blocked

Palantir’s founders have boasted of its activities terrifying and killing the US’s opponents. One refused to say he wants the human race to survive. The idea of handing out vulnerable patients’ sensitive information to a firm that helps Israel slaughter Palestinians and helps Trump hunt immigrants is grotesque. Yet the NHS recently insisted that patients have no right to opt out.

So Labour ‘CLPs’ wrote a motion demanding the Burnham government exercise its 2027 cancellation clause to boot Palantir out of the NHS – and the party has promptly scuppered it. The CLPs are questioning the decision, but the CAC’s record on Israel’s genocide does not offer much hope of a U-turn.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign organiser Dan Iley-Williamson said the government’s continued enrichment of a genocide-enabling corporation is ‘disgusting’:

Labour members – just like people up and down the country – are disgusted that a company deeply implicated in Israel’s ongoing genocide and apartheid against Palestinians has this £330 million NHS contract.”

It is deeply disappointing that Labour blocked this emergency motion, demonstrating that while the foreign secretary today said protesters for Palestine ‘were right’, the government is still refusing to match that with action.

Palantir just offered a fat salary to former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson. Is it already collecting a return on its investment?

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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